Rosemary wakes in the small, cheap transport pod she has contracted to take her to The Wayfarer, a wormhole boring ship onto which she has been hired. Rosemary is not her real name; she has spent all of her savings to forge her identity files to get hired on a ship like The Wayfarer. She has woken early, but the pod’s drug system puts her back to sleep for the rest of the journey.

On board The Wayfarer, Captain Ashby is approached by Corbin, the ship’s algaeist in charge of onboard fuel production. Corbin irritates Ashby enormously and is extremely antisocial; he is good at his job, so Ashby tolerates him. Corbin is angry that Ashby has hired Rosemary as the ship’s new clerk without consulting him. Corbin is convinced that a young person without deep space experience is unsuitable for the ship. Corbin then complains that Sissix, the pilot, has taken his special dentbots, nanomachines that clean the user’s mouth. Ashby lets Corbin vent for a bit up until the algaeist calls Sissix a “lizard,” a slur against her species. Ashby chastises Corbin and then calms him down.